From DIY Computers to Illegal Copies: The Controversy over Tinkering with Microcomputers in Taiwan, 1980-1984

In the early 1980s, tinkerers assembling and modifying microcomputers opened up this black-boxed technology and helped popularize microcomputers in Taiwan. Such activities, however, prompted copyright suits between Apple Computer and Taiwanese computer manufacturers. This article delineates the debate around those suits and examines how this practice shaped new social meanings of microcomputers in Taiwan.